The best thing you can do for the fediverse is just be kind
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Unless you're a republican or other type of nazi. Then you can absolutely go all the way to hell.
Tolerance got us here.
Ik a few people who lean to the right economically but aren't in favor of all this authoritarian stuff
And they're not Nazis, you cant just generalize so broadly about what should or shouldn't be tolerated.
Ofc if someone is being blatantly racist that shouldnt be tolerated, but economic discussion is totally fine -
Well I came here to chew bubblegum and talk shit, and I’m all out of bubblegum.
I am sorry surph_ninja, but I have to be honest, I was the one that stole your bubblegum
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He told people with swatikas tattooed on their bodies to coup the government!
To be fair, that was at the end of his term
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Happy Lemmy anniversary! I'm glad you're here
And yeah, I can very much understand that, I try to do the same. Sometimes it feels productive to talk with people you don't share perspective with, but if it's just gonna be a flame war I don't wanna go throwing gasoline, nothing is gained by that
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I love talking with people with a different perspective, and I love playing the devils advocate to try to understand other points of view better. As you said, if it’s just going to become a fight it’s completely meaningless.
It sounds like we share very similar approaches
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I disagree that kindness should be pursued foremost. Knowledge and truth should be pursued and kindness shouldn’t be allowed in charge because when it is you get shit like language policing which is insanely toxic and stupefying.
You want kindness? Go somewhere designed to be wholesome but please, for the love of honesty and free speech, don’t enforce that crap site wide.
I don't think kindness is at all mutually exclusive with knowledge and truth
To be clear I didn't mean "enforcing kindness" as in like forcing everyone to engage in a specific way or they're banned for not being nice enough
The big corporate platforms are, in a lot of ways, designed for hostility conflict and toxicity. Because they're designed for engagement, and anger drives engagement like nothing else possibly can. Facebook did internal studies and found their algorithm made people miserable, and then kept it that way because with respect profit, it was a great design.
I think we should be thoughtful about the mechanics of the platforms we're building and whether they incentivize people to lash out at eachother, or incentivizing healthy social spaces.
I'm not here in support of some dystopian "be positive or else" insincere niceness platform. But I do think it's worthwhile to shape the culture of the space we spend time in intentionally
I wanna enjoy being here. I'm here in pursuit of worthwhile, sincere interactions with other human beings, not shitty internet flamewars where nothing is gained and everyone walks away more bitter and angry -
I'll add: "be supportive and helpful if you can, and just shut up if you can't".
Fediverse is sometimes suffering from the same kind of people that Linux has - "oh you have a problem? Well, here's the GitHub repo and a project Wiki, figure it out".
Yeah, if I don't have the answer I usually just stop in to say I hope someone more knowledgeable can chime in and wish them luck.
That way the post at least gets a little engagement for visibility. But the "rtfm" attitude, while understandable, can be really miserable to be met with when you're out of your depth doing your best to learn about something new and need some help from another actual human.
We all begrudge the automated phone systems that try to reduce the need for human beings by helping people with simple problems, and that approach to helping people exists for good reason but it does feel like sometimes we're too eager to leave people to figure things out by themselves just because it's a lot of work to actually help them, human to human. None of us enjoy being treated that way when we need help.
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It sounds like we share very similar approaches
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Completely right OP, and this is worth repeating as MUCH as possible. More than almost any UX or intake changes, Fediverse will only grow if their experience of the community is good.
Unfortunately, some people have never caught a vibe in their life and it shows lol. A single person with a bad attitude can completely tank your experience in a small community, versus a 20,000 person subreddit where usernames are basically indistinguishable.
some people have never caught a vibe in their life and it shows
Lmao. And yeah, we actually have tangible evidence to support that idea Erin kissane has done a lot of incredible research work on how to effectively design the fediverse and support people in navigating it and one of the earlier things she did was interview people who left Mastodon after having bad experiences and collate that data-
A lot of people's reasons is that when they joined they were met with hostility. It plays a huge role in people's experiences here, and even just from a purely pragmatic perspective it's REALLY important
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The fediverse is small, and thats both a blessing and a curse - one of its several blessings is that in a smaller space we all individually have a bigger impact on what the culture of this space is like.
On this comm (and on lemmy broadly) there's a lot of discussion about how to grow the fediverse, what to improve, but an easy thing you can do for the fediverse is right in front of us-
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Be kind
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Ask people what they think, and why
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Approach folks you disagree with with curiosity rather than hostility
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Engage sincerely
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Ask yourself if there's something nice you can say
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Make this small space worth being in
A platform lives or dies by what's available on said platform and often we have this conversation in the context of "content" or posts - and we may never have as much content as reddit does. But content and posts aren't the only thing this kind of platform offers- it also offers people. It offers community, and human interaction.
Culture and community is lemmy and the fediverse's biggest differentiator, and we all have a role to play in shaping the culture of this space.
The biggest thing you can do to help the fediverse is make it a place worth being.
This place is becoming very Reddit, if you post anything that deviates from someone’s beliefs they call you names and insult your intelligence. So many people can’t have a debate or discussion without jumping to personal attacks and hate. It’s really disheartening. I love political debate but there’s no such thing anymore, only name calling
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Oh and happy Lemmy anniversary. Is it really today? Weird coincidence that I joined today.
I got temporarily banned from Reddit for saying that using ivermectin might kill you, and that was it. I’m done.
Interesting, ivermectin has that intense of side effects when taken orally? Or do the pseudo-science people who think it cures covid just advocate dosing it ridiculously high?
By coincidence I actually use ivermectin topically for my rosacea, a skin condition. Being a anti-parasitic its useful fro reducing the amount of demodex mites that can aggravate rosacea in some people! I know in people it's mostly used for lice.
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This place is becoming very Reddit, if you post anything that deviates from someone’s beliefs they call you names and insult your intelligence. So many people can’t have a debate or discussion without jumping to personal attacks and hate. It’s really disheartening. I love political debate but there’s no such thing anymore, only name calling
Doing a quick look through your comment history paints the picture that you're likely the issue since your responses are often vaguely or overtly aggressive. Snide and snark.
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This place is becoming very Reddit, if you post anything that deviates from someone’s beliefs they call you names and insult your intelligence. So many people can’t have a debate or discussion without jumping to personal attacks and hate. It’s really disheartening. I love political debate but there’s no such thing anymore, only name calling
Its definitely rough, I can understand why. I live in the US and as a queer person whose loved ones are almost all minorities the outlook is feeling pretty bleak, but its definitely frustrating that it feels like even slightly different left wing ideas, or thoughts on what we do about our problems can spawn flamewars.
Literally with people you're in the exact same camp with
I'm also big on political debate, I think democracy can't function unless people can discuss with eachother what problems we have and what we think we should do about them. (And yes, I know we increasingly may not have much of democracy here in the US. I still think my statement is true of how democracy functions in general)I think it's really valuable to learn how people arive at worldviews other than mine.
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This place is becoming very Reddit, if you post anything that deviates from someone’s beliefs they call you names and insult your intelligence. So many people can’t have a debate or discussion without jumping to personal attacks and hate. It’s really disheartening. I love political debate but there’s no such thing anymore, only name calling
Spez had his gestapo admins ban a bunch of people after Elon had a fit so you're getting a lot of the terminally online types coming here. My suggestion is just don't give them any attention and they'll eventually give up. I was in a few lefty subs and holy shit you could smell some of the people there just from their comments.
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I arrived at LEMMY after what I think we very optimistically called the Reddit Collapse. We wish. And I had toe in LEMMY and a few others at Reddit.
Recently with their abusively patronizing redesigning and gamification and just ugly bullshit, I can’t stomach Reddit at all. So LEMMY grows increasingly important, not just to me but to folks who haven’t yet even heard of it.
So, I’ll just say thanks for your post here. I have, I confess, engaged with a couple bullies on LEMMY and I always try to say… I don’t like to do this on LEMMY— and I say that precisely for the reasons you mention.
And as you encourage: I will try to be kinder, even in when feeling… hmm… less than kind.
Thats when I came here too. Sadly, spez had his yes man ban a lot of people and some bad ones broke containment because of it.
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Its definitely rough, I can understand why. I live in the US and as a queer person whose loved ones are almost all minorities the outlook is feeling pretty bleak, but its definitely frustrating that it feels like even slightly different left wing ideas, or thoughts on what we do about our problems can spawn flamewars.
Literally with people you're in the exact same camp with
I'm also big on political debate, I think democracy can't function unless people can discuss with eachother what problems we have and what we think we should do about them. (And yes, I know we increasingly may not have much of democracy here in the US. I still think my statement is true of how democracy functions in general)I think it's really valuable to learn how people arive at worldviews other than mine.
Yeah. So much of our social media is structured to reinforce being combative. Even the upvote/downvote feature of Reddit/Lemmy etc has this effect of rewarding performativity over substance. People start competing for points and start to interpret high point totals as the equivalent of winning an argument or saying something of substance.
Since it’s a lot easier to get upvotes if you’re pithy or snarky or unserious the whole mechanism that underpins this tech tilts people toward simplistic and aggressive rhetoric.
I don’t want to get too “the medium is the message” here and complexity in political discussions (or any discussions really) have been decreasing generation over generation - so it’s not just a social media problem. But social media seems to have broken so many of the traditional guardrails we’ve had against demagoguery. It’s going to take a lot to unwind it.
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Doing a quick look through your comment history paints the picture that you're likely the issue since your responses are often vaguely or overtly aggressive. Snide and snark.
There it is
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Yeah. So much of our social media is structured to reinforce being combative. Even the upvote/downvote feature of Reddit/Lemmy etc has this effect of rewarding performativity over substance. People start competing for points and start to interpret high point totals as the equivalent of winning an argument or saying something of substance.
Since it’s a lot easier to get upvotes if you’re pithy or snarky or unserious the whole mechanism that underpins this tech tilts people toward simplistic and aggressive rhetoric.
I don’t want to get too “the medium is the message” here and complexity in political discussions (or any discussions really) have been decreasing generation over generation - so it’s not just a social media problem. But social media seems to have broken so many of the traditional guardrails we’ve had against demagoguery. It’s going to take a lot to unwind it.
I agree. You can get a lot of positive reinforcement from sincere positive engagement (this post gave me lots, lol
) but it's exhausting work compared to just making a snide jab. And that really does profoundly shape peoples behavior over time.I'm a BIG believer in the idea that the medium makes the message, and how we design the mechanics of this space shapes how we behave. Erin kissane has talked about that some in her work studying the fediverse and it's really stuck with me.
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As so often, the answer is found in scripture:
One day Mal-2 asked the messenger spirit Saint Gulik to approach the Goddess and request Her presence for some desperate advice. Shortly afterwards the radio came on by itself, and an ethereal female Voice said YES?
"O! Eris! Blessed Mother of Man! Queen of Chaos! Daughter of Discord! Concubine of Confusion! O! Exquisite Lady, I beseech You to lift a heavy burden from my heart!"
WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL.
"I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?
"But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it."
OH. WELL, THEN STOP.
At which moment She turned herself into an aspirin commercial and left The Polyfather stranded alone with his species.
Answer. I said answer. Not solution. Too much aspirin and your blood thins out and you need to move to Transylvania.
That took my brain a hot minute to process lol. Is that actually from something or did you just invent it on the spot?
"I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."
"But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it.
"OH. WELL, THEN STOP.
Unironically wisdom we should all learn from. I can't stop for other people but I can at least choose how I act, and whether I contribute to that pain suffering and discord.
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There it is
I wasn't looking for dirt, I was genuinely curious as to why you were having that experience. I'm not attacking you, just giving you my opinion which is ironic... Of course self reflection isn't for everyone and it's often easier to assume our problems are all external, but in reality it's usually a bit of both. Anyway, I hope your experience here gets better.
